A French court on Tuesday begins hearing the landmark trial of a former Rwandan army captain charged with complicity in the 1994 genocide that left 800,000 people dead.
Wheelchair-bound since a car accident in 1986, Simbikangwa was a proponent of “Hutu Power”, an ideology promoted by Hutu extremists, and was in charge of spying on the opposition’s press outlets. He also contributed to the creation of “Radio Mille Collines”, where, for years, he voiced virulent anti-Tutsi propaganda on the air, encouraging those who would carry out the massacre against Tutsi “cockroaches”.
urthermore, according to Belgian researcher Olivier Lanotte, the Rwandan army, secretly planning the massacre, swelled from 5,500 to 35,000 men between 1990 and 1994 thanks to French support – another painful scar on France’s political and moral conscience.